Professional Blog Service » Social Networks

Awesomize.me is Still The Awesome

Erik Deckers — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 16:51:02 +0000

I just got a very nice comment from Tatiana Sorabi from Awesomize.me very politely pointing out that I can be a big whiner at times. After my last post, Should I Cover Up the Name of No Bullshit Social Media?, Tatiana responded a couple days later with this very nice comment.

Erik, We are working on the issue. You jumped on this too quick. Your inquiry was forwarded to me last week. This was the first incident for us. We are still in startup phase and lacking resources.

To avoid ending up another myspace, we have put in place a strong policing system to keep the spammers and offenders away. We fully realize you are neither spammer nor offender. We are trying to come up with a solution how to separate your case with others. Once, the solution is in place, I send you a note.

Meanwhile, I encourage you to create a page for your company and book on our site. You can use the “Add Product” Template for your book.

So, I rescind my complaint, and will add my product for my book. AND I’ll rename my book to No Bullsh*t so they have plenty of time to work on their solution.

Author : Erik Deckers • Content Location : Indianapolis, IN • Content Rating : PG • Contributor : Tatiana Sorabi • Copyright Holder : Professional Blog Service • Copyright Year : 2011 • Creator : Erik Deckers • Headline : Awesomize.me is Still The Awesome • Keywords : No Bullshit Social Media, censorship, books, publishing, social networks, awesomize.me • Mentions : Awesomize.me • Version : 1.0 •

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Should I Cover Up the Name of No Bullshit Social Media?

Erik Deckers — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 17:00:16 +0000

Should I Cover Up the Name of No Bullshit Social Media?

Update: Awesomize.me contacted me with a great response addressing this issue.

I wrote a book with a naughty word in the title.

My latest book, No Bullshit Social Media, which I wrote with my good friend Jason Falls, has generated surprisingly little controversy. It’s been placed cover out on all the shelves in all the Barnes & Noble bookstores. It was even on their New Arrivals shelf, top center, where everyone could see it.

Of course, there has been some controversy. I’ve given presentations where I had to refer to the book as “No BS.” One group asked that I not mention the book at all, and since they dealt with a lot of very conservative Christians, who would be attending the conference, I was fine with that. (I covered up most of the offending word, and kept the cover one the last slide of the slide deck though.)

I’m not ashamed of the title. I’m not sorry I did it. I understand that some people don’t like saying it, and I’m fine with that. If they want to call it No BS, they’re more than welcome to. I won’t tell someone to do something they’re not comfortable with.

But what’s bothering me today is a particular social network, awesomize.me is covering up the title of the book completely. In my bio, I included the title of my book, spelled out in all its 4 letter (8 letter?) glory.

However, the “no naughty words” algorithm covered up the word, and recast it as No @#$% Social Media.

This actually bothers me. I can’t tell you why. It’s not censorship, because awesomize.me is a private company, and they can do what they want. If they want to make a rule that says “no swear words,” then they’re free to do it.

But at the same time, I’m annoyed by the fact that on a social network made up of grownups, I can’t use a grownup word. Not in a gratuitous, shocking, let’s-make-everyone-giggle kind of a way. But in a this-is-a-real-book-title way.

The easy thing to do would be to just change the title of the book myself to “No BS Social Media,” or “No Bull***” or even “No Bullsh*t.” But I don’t want to. That’s not the name of the book.

Am I overreacting? Should I just toe the line and change the title of the book in my bio? Or should I stand firm on principle, and refuse to change it, even if it means that people are going to wonder what @#$% stands for?

What would you do?

About : No Bullshit Social Media and censorship • Accountable Person : Erik Deckers • Author : Erik Deckers • Content Location : Indianapolis, IN • Content Rating : PG-13 • Copyright Holder : Professional Blog Service • Copyright Year : 2011 • Creator : Erik Deckers • Editor : Erik Deckers • Genre : Non-fiction • Headline : Should I Cover Up the Name of No Bullshit Social Media? • Keywords : No Bullshit Social Media, censorship, books, publishing, social networks • Mentions : Jason Falls • Publisher : Professional Blog Service • Version : 1.0 •

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Four Online Predictions for 2012

Erik Deckers — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 13:00:38 +0000

Four Online Predictions for 2012

Okay, I’m going to jump on the trends bandwagon and offer yet another online predictions blog post where I polish my crystal ball and predict the future of social media. I think I have a decent track record going for me. In 2010, I predicted that Android sales were going to outpace iPhones, and I was only six months late on that (it finally happened earlier this year). Of course, I also said SMS would become obsolete, and that ain’t happening any time soon, so I’m batting .500.

Emboldened by my previous success — and with a promise to Allison Carter (@allisonlcarter) that this list will not mention mobile or geo-location networks — here are my four predictions for 2012.

1. An even bigger focus on quality of written content.

Thanks to Google Panda, the traditional SEO techniques of on-site optimization and backlinking is not as effective or important as it once was. Now, Panda measures things like bounce rate and time on site. In other words, if your site sucks, your rankings will drop. If your site is good, your rankings will rise.

Want to improve your rankings? Improve the quality of your content, especially your writing. The better your writing is, the longer people will stick around.

We’ll see a bigger push for web designers and bloggers to have better writing, not just a bunch of schlocky writing. So for anyone who has been in the quantity-over-quality camp of blog writing, you’re going to have a tough time of it in 2012.

2. Disruption will be the watchword, and the way to make money.

We’re already seeing how social media, broadband, and mobile phones are disrupting some middle men businesses. People are canceling their cable and satellite TV, and instead watching videos on Netflix and Hulu. We’re getting local news from local bloggers, or national news from each other, instead of TV news and newspapers. I even quit listening to local commercial radio, choosing instead to listen to an awesome public radio station out of Louisville, KY. Traditional media has been disrupted, but that’s not all.

We’ll continue to see more middle men being disrupted by fast phones and social media — look for advertising and PR agencies, publishers, banks, and credit card companies to take a big hit as people figure out how to circumvent these gatekeepers. Look for other people who figure it out to make a buttload of money being the disruptions, or taking advantage of the new disruptions.

(Case in point, Dwolla, which only charges $.25 per transaction for anything over $10 (under $10 is free), and is currently on course to move about $350 million per year.)

3. Citizen journalism will continue to grow and become more important.

Newspapers have taken a big hit in the last 10 years, thanks to online media — a disruption that’s been years in the making — but people still want local news. The newspapers that will survive and thrive will be the dailies in smaller cities, and the weeklies in small towns. In the big cities, we’ll see more citizen journalism as people report on their local stories. More Twitpics, more cell phone videos, more stories that are pieced together through people acting like their own journalists.

I would love to see some news-minded entrepreneur figure out a way to gather all of this content and monetize it. While that may not happen in 2012, look for online-only newspapers like The American Reporter to pick up the slack of the big city papers, and local news outlets like Patch to become more widespread and easier to use.

We’re going to see more news, commentary, sports, etc. covered up by real people, not professional journalists. I also think we’ll see smaller print newspapers get smarter about their online efforts, and even TV stations to continue to embrace the web. Could we also see someone start an Internet-only TV news style of website?

4. Teenagers will begin to leave Facebook in droves.

Their moms and dads are on Facebook. Their grandparents are on Facebook. The whole point behind Facebook was it was a place to go where you could be cool. And as everyone knows, it’s impossible to be cool when your parents are around. They’re moving to other networks where their parents are not. Even Ben Bajarin (@benbajarin) of Time Magazine is questioning whether it’s the beginning of the end for Facebook. (Hint: No, not yet. But don’t be surprised if it happens one day far off into the future.)

Where they’re all going is still unknown. MySpace is still popular among teenagers. YouTube is actually the second biggest network among teenagers (Facebook is still first). And the gaming console networks are seeing a big uptick. But when all the stats are showing that 1 in 5 teenagers are leaving Facebook, it’s time for marketers to stop with this “social media is for young people” nonsense and recognize that the parents and grandparents are embracing it more easily now.

Photo credit: JasonLangheine (Flickr)

About : Online predictions • Accountable Person : Erik Deckers • Author : Erik Deckers • Content Location : Indianapolis, IN • Content Rating : G • Copyright Holder : Professional Blog Service • Copyright Year : 2011 • Creator : Erik Deckers • Editor : Erik Deckers • Genre : Non-fiction • Headline : Four Online Predictions for 2012 • Keywords : predictions, social media, citizen journalism, Facebook, disruption, marketing • Mentions : Facebook, blogging, social media, citizen journalism • Publisher : Professional Blog Service • Source Organization : Professional Blog Service • Version : 1.0 •

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Calling Out Bad Behavior via Social Media

Erik Deckers — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 13:00:28 +0000

Calling Out Bad Behavior via Social Media

We tend to be pretty passive-aggressive as a society. And social media seems to have made it worse, in some ways. Social media has made it possible for us to point out bad behavior, and we’ll often do it to a complete stranger, but we won’t do it to our friends.

I did a short (unscientific) survey last month to find out whether people would call out bad behavior on the part of strangers versus friends. I wasn’t surprised by some of the results, partly because most of the people I know are pretty nice people and not prone to being online jerks. But mostly because many respondents are from the Midwest, and we’re annoyingly nice about a lot of things.

Summary

Basically what I found is, we are more likely to forgive friends, but we will stick it to a complete stranger.

If we are wronged by a friend, we’ll point it out privately rather than call it out.
40% of us will hang a stranger out to dry publicly; nearly all of us will tell someone else about it.
Only a very few people will say or do nothing, either about a friend or a stranger’s bad behavior.

The Survey

This was a four question survey, with a series of answers that asks about responses that range from very direct (and rather jerky) to very passive (being a doormat).

For example, question #1 asked: When a friend — who uses social media — wrongs me in some way, I am more likely to:

Call them out BY NAME on a social network. “I can’t believe @edeckers stood me up for our meeting this morning.”
Point out my annoyance, but don’t mention their name. “Got stood up for a 7:30 am meeting.”
Send them a private message pointing out the problem. “Did you forget we had a meeting this morning?”
Absolutely nothing.

The Results

So would you @reply someone or set your Facebook status to call them out by name? Or would you passive-aggressively point out to the whole world that some unnamed jerkface missed your morning meeting?

I wasn’t that surprised by the results. Most people are nice enough to keep our gripes private, and to not air our grievances in public, and the numbers bore this out. Out of 107 responses to Question 1:

80 people (74.7%) said they would email their friend privately to point out their problems.
12 people (11.2%) would call out the incident, but not name the person.
11 people (10.2%) would do absolutely nothing at all.
4 people (3%) would call that person out by name.

I was intrigued that the number of people who would do absolutely nothing to tell the other person what they had done was nearly the same as the number of people who would point out the bad behavior but not name any names.

When I’m in public, and someone does something annoying, I am more likely to:

Friends vs. Strangers

Question #2 was about whether people would point out something annoying that someone else did, but not to them: When I’m in public, and someone does something annoying, I am more likely to:

Point out their bad behavior on a social network, including pictures or video. “Check out this jerkwad being an ass to his wife.”
Point out their bad behavior, but give them their anonymity. “Some guy next to me is being an ass to his wife.”
Email a friend privately and relay the story to them.
Absolutely nothing.

The results were a little more dramatic this time compared to what people would say to their friends. Out of 106 responses (someone missed this one):

57 people (53.8%) said they would email a friend privately to tell them about the stranger’s behavior.
32 people (30.2%) said they would call out this stranger’s behavior, and include pictures or videos
11 people (10.3%) would call out the behavior, but not include any identifying information.
6 people (5.7%) would do absolutely nothing.

When a stranger does something annoying in public, I am more likely to:

Observations

This is the stuff that intrigues me, and really makes me wish I had paid better attention in stats class in grad school. Because there are some interesting correlations between what we consider acceptable behavior toward friends versus complete strangers.

Most people (nearly 75%) will tell friends privately about their own bad behavior, but 40.5% of these people will publicly call out bad behavior from a stranger.
Compare that to 3% of people who would call out a friend by name on Twitter or Facebook. This tells me that most people are nice, and a few can be rather cut-throat and nasty.
Surprisingly, more people — 30.2% vs. 10.3% — will point an accusing finger at a stranger by including evidence of their bad behavior than will give them anonymity.
94.3% of people will tell someone about a stranger’s bad behavior, whether it’s publicly or via email.
The number of people who would point out bad behavior but protect the person’s identity in either situation is nearly the same: 10.3% will talk about a stranger versus 11.2% who will call out, but not identify, friends (11 people vs. 12 people).
The percentage of people who will do nothing when a friend wrongs them versus a stranger nearly doubled — 10.2% versus 5.7% respectively, or 11 versus 6 people.

Conclusion

So what does all of this mean? Are we people with a strong sense of moral outrage who will point out the failings of other people, but only when they’re not anyone we know? And do we hold back out of fear of retribution or respect for our friends’ feelings? Or do we have an overwhelming sense of schadenfreude, but refrain from doing it at inappropriate moments?

What about you? What do you think? What conclusions can you draw from this study? What do you think this tells us about ourselves, as it relates to social media?

The rest of the questions:

Question #3: When I am having an argument with a friend or family member, I will start/continue the discussion on a social network.

Yes (2 people)
No (105 people)

Question #4: Which social network do you use the most?

Twitter (51 people)
Facebook (50)
LinkedIn (5)
Google+ (1)

Author : Erik Deckers • Content Location : Indianapolis, IN • Copyright Year : 2011 • Headline : Calling Out Bad Behavior via Social Media • Keywords : social media, bad behavior, survey, study, Twitter, Facebook •

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Quantify the Value of Social Media for a Music or Arts Festival

Erik Deckers — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 12:00:15 +0000

Quantify the Value of Social Media for a Music or Arts Festival

Let’s say you work for a large country music festival in Prince Edward Island, Canada, and you want to quantify the value of your social network so you can get sponsors for it.

Okay, this may only apply to one of you in the entire world, but the ideas are transferable to anyone who wants to determine the value of their social network, so you can sell it to sponsors and advertisers.

Kim Doyle (@Kim_Doyle) works for the Cavendish Beach Music Festival, which is held every July. I emailed a response to her and then figured it would make a good blog post, especially since I love going to music and art festivals, and am hoping one of them will arrange an onsite consulting gig at the festival. (I’m just sayin’.)

What is the Value of a Social Network?

Basically, the statement you want to be able to make to your sponsors is “our network will have X value to you.”

Pemberton Music Festival

This is a little tough for a new network, because it has no “value,” since it’s still unproven. But an established network has more value, because you know how big it can get, you’ve already seen what it can do, and you’ve been delivering clicks and eyeballs to your other social properties.

We can’t say for certain what value the network will be until AFTER the festival happens. Next year, you can demonstrate last year’s numbers. And if you’ve been doing it for a few years, you can show growth. But it’s hard to say, our network will deliver X visitors.

That’s because you need to be able to trace the interactions and transactions from your network to the sponsor’s properties, and they need to trace what happens from there. But if they’re not doing any monitoring or measuring themselves, then they have no idea what those visitors are worth. You can only show them raw numbers, but it’s up to them to demonstrate the value.

Measuring the Social Media Traffic

1) Show them how you can track all the visitors to your website, all the members of your social network, and measure the amount of time they spend interacting with the site and with each other.

You’ll do this through Google Analytics (# of visitors, time on site, # of pages visited), Klout score (especially your influence and reach), Facebook analytics, and Bitly (# of links clicked).

Include links on your blog (“Please visit our sponsors who make this possible. The more you visit, the more they support us.“), and count the number of times people click those links. Post links to their sites via Twitter (“we want to thank Floaty Bits Bottled Water for supporting Cavendish Beach Music. Visit them here.”)

If you can show those numbers, you can show sponsors what you can deliver. If this is a new venture, start measuring the size of your network, plot its growth, and see if you can start driving traffic to your site in order to show potential.

2) Show them the demographics of who they will be reaching. If you can know a few demographics of the people who come to your festival, you can show sponsors why you’re going to reach them better than traditional mass media.

For example, if a big part of your audience falls within Generation Y, you can find articles and studies that show a lot of Generation Y doesn’t watch TV, they Tivo it and skip commercials, or they watch a lot of YouTube videos on their mobile phones. So create promotional videos, put them on YouTube with a sponsor’s logo in the bottom right corner just like on TV.

See how many different ways you can drive traffic to the video, and measure each channel to see what drove the most traffic (use different Bitly links per source, 1 for Twitter, 1 for Facebook, 1 for the blog, etc.) Measuring that traffic will give a sponsor an idea of the kind of traffic you’ll be able to drive for them.

3) Remind them that they are going to be reaching a niche audience in a way that no one else can: they will reach a large group of people who are passionate about your festival and that music/art. But unlike the festival-only sponsors, they’ll be reaching them long before and long after the festival ends.

And not in the “your logo will be on the t-shirt” way of reaching them.

But if you’re sending out tweets that point to videos with a sponsor’s logo on it, and those fans watch the videos to see who will be playing, or to see a recap of the last festival, those sponsors get more exposure than the ones who were only visible during the festival itself. And any links from the YouTube page to the sponsor’s page can have a major positive impact on their search engine placement.

Consider doing a daily/nightly recap of the festival each day. Treat it like a little newscast where a “reporter” is on scene (film it with a high-def digital camera, not a mobile phone), interviewing artists and fans, showing a few seconds of the artist playing, and then putting it all into a YouTube video (complete with sponsor logo). Tweet that out a few times the next day, let people access it via QR code, and put it on Facebook for the fans who couldn’t make it, and count the traffic there too.

These are just a few ways music and arts festivals can find a sponsor specifically for their social media marketing and social networking efforts. These kinds of affinity groups can be a marketing goldmine for marketers because they’re reaching a dedicated niche audience who has an affinity for that festival, and are more inclined to support people who support something they love.

Photo credit: theburied.life

Author : Erik Deckers • Content Location : Indianapolis, IN • Copyright Year : 2011 • Headline : Quantify the Value of Social Media for a Music or Arts Festival • Keywords : social network, social media marketing, music festival, arts festival •

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Search and Social: A Partnership for the Ages

Erik Deckers — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 17:00:02 +0000

Search and Social: A Partnership for the Ages

Robbie Williams is an SEO Consultant at Slingshot, and wrote this guest post in exchange for a guest post I wrote for their website.

Robbie Williams. I love his version of 'Somewhere Beyond the Sea' from Finding Nemo

What grabs a social media guru’s attention faster than mentioning the term “social media guru?”

The answer: Providing data-driven ROI statistics for their industry and, better yet, doing it in conjunction with SEO.

Worked, didn’t it?

Now that I have your attention, I want you to dabble in my thoughts for a moment.

I’ve often pondered how a social media practitioner would address the topic of “Search and Social” as they are the two dominating powers on the Internet. Now I know. They turn to the SEO professionals to address it.

As we all know, the Google algo is one of mankind’s best kept secrets. So I’m not going to come out and tell you that I know anything in my industry to be a 100% fact — aside from what Google tells us directly (which often keeps me up at night). However, I can back up my opinions and observations with the experience of day-in, day-out SEO practice, where dealing with rankings for an array of keywords is my entire world.

Within this digital domain, I’ve had first-hand experience with the algorithm and how it responds to certain human signals; e.g., social signals. However, (drumroll please….) social signals alone have yet to produce an identifiable, data-proven effect on rankings in the majority of SERPs. So yes, given the access to the data streams of Twitter and Facebook, there has been a trace amount of evidence where social media has had a noticeable effect on rankings in certain keyword search queries.

Now, back to proving ROI for social media with search. We all know how powerful social media has become and it’s not unreasonable to think that Google doesn’t realize it too. As a matter of fact, it has attempted to gain access to the Twitter and Facebook “fire hoses” (the full feed of information behind their massive firewalls) but to no avail … yet. As soon as this happens, you better believe that social media is going to have a significant effect on rankings, and it’s only a matter of time.

***Disclaimer: As an SEO professional, I am required to mention the discussion Correlation vs. Causation when discussing this topic. So here it goes: a page/brand/keyword will typically have social cues surrounding it because it’s a good page/brand/keyword and it will rank accordingly because of this. The reverse is not true, a page/brand/keyword will not rank only because it has social. In the world of SEO, it’s never that simple.***

Imagine a graph illustrating the respective positions of traffic-driving, conversion-producing keywords in individual SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). Now overlay it with another graph of social media activity that’s been strategically produced around the same SEO keywords.

What do you see? Positive correlation (not necessarily causation). Additionally, imagine a Google Analytics graph showing increased conversion, increased on-page time and click-through rates, as well as a decrease in user bounce rates for those same keywords and their associated pages, overlaid on top. (I’m drooling at the thought of this, I don’t know about you…)

Boom. professional search engine optimization company. Aside from work, he loves being outside; running, mountain biking, adventure racing, etc. Robbie’s current motto: If you keep life full, you never have time to worry about tomorrow.

Author : Robbie Williams • Content Location : Indianapolis, IN • Copyright Year : 2011 • Headline : Search and Social: A Partnership for the Ages • Keywords : social media, search engine optimization, websites, SEOmoz, Slingshot SEO, Robbie Williams •

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People Who Don’t Use Social Media Shouldn’t Dismiss Social Media

Erik Deckers — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 12:00:11 +0000

People Who Don’t Use Social Media Shouldn’t Dismiss Social Media

“I don’t use social media because I don’t want to tell people what I had for breakfast,” declare social media haters.

“I don’t use Facebook because I don’t care enough about the minutiae of other people’s lives to bother reading it,” they say with the dismissive snottiness of people who refuse to own a TV.

I’m always annoyed by people who just outright dismiss social media as a place where people talk about breakfast, bathroom habits, and life’s inanities, despite the fact that they have never used it.

I read a recent article — Academics and Colleges Split Their Personalities for Social Media — where several commenters proudly crowed about their dislike for social media, and declared it inane and useless. (Hat tip to my friend Anthony Juliano for a great response.)

One of the comments by “transparentopaque” caught Anthony’s and my attention:

I do not have a Facebook or Twitter account. So, I have nothing to worry about. I have yet to figure out what anybody could possibly have to say via Twitter that I absolutely need to read. Is anyone’s life really that interesting? Yes, but only those people who do not waste their time posting on social media networks. Life is happening, and many people today are wasting it away talking about it. Instead of living in the moment, people are analyzing every aspect of their life to determine its suitability as a Facebook status update.

I’ve determined that it isn’t really the “sharing” that drives people to social media, it is the sense that they have a captive audience. But that is only an illusion. Few people participate in order to read what others have to say; they participate in order to have a forum in which they can hear themselves speak. Narcissism has finally found its place in this world.

The problem with “transparentopaque’s” attitude and practice is that as someone who does not use social media, he/she has no way of knowing how other people are using it.

We see this with business owners all the time. “Our customers don’t use social media.” But they have no way of knowing this for certain, since they never use it.

It’s like saying “no one visits that restaurant because I’ve never been there.”

And yes, I was struck by the irony of someone asking whether anyone’s life is interesting, and then declaring social media to be “a forum in which they can hear themselves speak,” in the comments section of a website — another form of social networking.

I always get agitated by people who say they’ll never do something, eat something, watch something, or participate in something without ever having tried it. (Although to be fair, I won’t eat mussels after reading Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential. And yes, I have eaten them before. But if the guy who has an entire TV show about eating nearly anything on the planet won’t eat them, it’s probably a good idea to avoid them.)

If you don’t try something, how do you know you won’t like it. If you don’t use Twitter or Facebook, how do you know what people are using it for?

Of course, there are always those people who say “I don’t need to try heroin to know it’s bad for me.”

True, but Facebook isn’t heroin. One is an addictive experience that will open up new worlds to you while at the same time isolating you from friends and family, and the other is an illegal narcotic.

But unless you’ve tried Facebook or Twitter for a while (at least a month, for 20 minutes a day), you don’t know enough about it to dismiss it without looking like a myopic, close-minded curmudgeon who still thinks TV is a passing fad.

Author : Erik Deckers • Content Location : Indianapolis, IN • Copyright Year : 2011 • Headline : People Who Don't Use Social Media Shouldn't Dismiss Social Media • Keywords : social media, Twitter, Facebook, television •

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Dear Social Media Haters: Social Networking Isn’t Going Anywhere

Paul Lorinczi — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 12:00:49 +0000

Dear Social Media Haters: Social Networking Isn’t Going Anywhere

Business blogging and social media can be effective in helping products or services find an audience to generate conversations. Business blogging is the hub of any social media campaign. Yet, how do you move large segments of the population to evangelize your product or service like a preacher can move a congregation?

Scientists at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have found that when just 10 percent of the population holds an unshakable belief, their belief will always be adopted by the majority of the society.

This has played out recently with the events that have happened in Egypt, Syria, Libya and Tunisia. By accounts, small segments of the population were able to use Facebook and Twitter to steer their ideas into a majority which resulted in what has become known as the “Arab Spring”.

Who says that cannot be done for a product or service? Look at Facebook, which is used by nearly half of the US population (170 million US users), or Twitter, which is used by 14% of the US’ adult Internet users.

But to be a part of this trend, you have to participate in social media first. If you are not even engaging in conversation online, then your brand or competitor could be eating your lunch.

As one of our clients said, “If you’re not tracking Twitter or Facebook, your brand could get destroyed. People can be really mean.” So participation is key. Because the 10% rule can go both ways. It can work for you or against you.

Why? Consider this, Generation Y has now surpassed Baby Boomers as the largest population in the United States. They don’t watch television like Baby Boomers still do. Generation Y is online, texting and watching Youtube. If you want to reach Generation Y, television and newspapers will not do it.

If you want to move them and become a majority product in their circles, you will have to participate in social media to make it happen. It’s scientifically proven that it only takes 10% for a movement to move like fire.

Paul is the President of Professional Blog Service. PBS works with clients making strategic investments into business blogging, social media and search engine optimization.

Paul Lorinczi

Paul Lorinczi is the President of Professional Blog Service. The goal of the company is the help clients use Blogging and Social Media to expand their business online through planning, execution, and measurement.

Author : Paul Lorinczi • Content Location : Indianapolis, IN • Copyright Year : 2011 • Headline : Dear Social Media Haters: Social Networking Isn't Going Anywhere • Keywords : social media, social networking •

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10 Ways To Spot Bullshit In Social Media Vendors

Erik Deckers — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 14:00:30 +0000

10 Ways To Spot Bullshit In Social Media Vendors

My friend and writing partner for No Bullshit Social Media, Jason Falls, has an interesting take on what today’s social media hippies have in common with the early hippies of 1964.

In 1964, Beat Generation poet and newly-crowed author du jour Ken Kesey packed a merry band of friends into a van and led the group across the U.S. en route to the New York World’s Fair. Tripping on LSD most of the way, the Merry Pranksters sat out to enlighten America. Incredibly, though stopped by police on several occasions, according to a new documentary film about the journey called Magic Trip: Ken Kesey’s Search for a Kool Place, they were never arrested. Kesey’s friend Neal Cassady, who was the inspiration for Jack Kerouac’s On The Road protagonist Dean Moriarty, drove the bus and would fast talk his way around the law enforcement officers.

Remember, this wasn’t deep into the hippie era in the U.S. Some would argue this particular bus trip was the first real exposure to what hippies would become that much of America had ever seen. So when the police pulled the bus over, there wasn’t an automatic level of suspicion about pot or LSD or kids doing drugs. Besides, LSD was still legal then. The bus occupants were an eclectic bunch from California armed with movie cameras. “We’re making a movie,” was probably all the excuse Cassady needed to use to get around many unsuspecting law enforcement officers in that era.

Similarly, when social media’s early pioneers, only a few of whom I suspect of illegal drug use (joke), stood on their virtual pedestals and preached on and on about how the new world of marketing was all about conversation and engagement, many of us were razzle-dazzled by the potential of fulfilling the Cluetrain vision. Brands could become one again with the people. Perhaps even get on a bus, drink drug-laced Kool-Aid and enlighten the world.

While I didn’t live through the 60s, my parents were in the middle of it. Perhaps I am a direct result of them. Still, I wasn’t there. It’s hard for me to opine on what did or did not happen and why. But taking the pragmatists view that the grand bus trip that was the Beat and Hippie Generations was less about enlightenment and more about getting high, one can see the world of social media as less about enlightenment and more about playing online all day.

Okay, perhaps I’m being a bit snarky.

Like the police officers duped by Kesey’s merry band of Beats, businesses from the initial inklings of social media’s priests and prophets until recently have failed to see through the bullshit. Engagement, conversation, listening … all well and good, but where’s the other half of the equation? Where’s the money? Where’s the revenue? Where’s the business?

Certainly, there are dozens of companies who have seen the light, or gotten lucky with the opportunities, and have recorded social media successes. The Dells and Southwest Airlines of the world are to be commended for early adoption and visionary activation. But the vast majority of businesses are better trained cops. They still see social media as bullshit.

If only someone could convince business owners, small and large, marketing managers and the like that when you add the word “marketing” to the phrase “social media” it is not only about conversation and engagement, but also about business, the industry could continue to grow, perhaps more rapidly. Erik Deckers and I have (humbly) tried just that with our upcoming book No Bullshit Social Media: The All-Business, No-Hype Guide to Social Media Marketing . In it we recognize the genuine and genuinely accurate recommendations of the purists. But we also see through the fast-talk, smoke screen.

It’s not about playing online all day. It’s not a virtual commune where we all get enlightened. It can be a market. And goods and services can be bought and sold there. Companies are welcome, but if they play by the rules of the road, as it were.

For many of the puritanical themes, Erik and I spot the bullshit. In order to help you do the same with the consultants, agencies and experts you’re dealing with as you navigate the road of social media enlightenment, here are some warning signs you might have a bullshit artist at play:

10 Ways To Spot The Bullshit In Social Media Vendors

It only takes them 15 seconds of the first answer to mention Twitter.
They talk continually about “conversation” “listening” and “engagement” but never define what those are or what it means for your company to practice them.
They fumble around, covering their tracks with ministerial-type rants about customer service when you ask them how social media can drive revenue.
They talk about “the rules” of social media marketing.
They only produce case studies everyone knows — Dell, Southwest Airlines, Comcast — and can’t cite local or small-business case studies readily.
Their references don’t include businesses they’ve activated a social media strategy or tactic for.
They talk of “building community” but focus the conversation on social networking software (Ning, Jive, etc.) rather than communications strategies that will foster community among your customers.
When you ask about your website or search engine results they say neither have anything to do with social media.
When you ask how they do market research they answer, “I use Google.”
Just as you get to the desire to reduce customer acquisition cost, their eyes glaze over and the check their phone for messages.

We’re sure you have more ideas on how to spot the bullshit. The comments are yours.

For a free chapter of No Bullshit Social Media, jump over to the book website and download away! While you’re there, be sure to pre-order your copy at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million or Que Publishing.

And order a couple extra for those bullshit-sensitive friends and clients. We’d be honored if you did.

Your pre-orders should arrive in late September.

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People Who Predict Failure Don’t Add Value

Erik Deckers — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 12:00:20 +0000

People Who Predict Failure Don’t Add Value

I’m tired of people who predict the failure of some new tool before it ever even gets off the ground. They’re cowards, doomsayers, and nattering nabobs of negativity. They don’t actually provide any real value, or anything I can use. They’re like the petulant child who automatically says “Nope. Won’t do it. Don’t wanna” to anything her family suggests.

It’s not hard to predict failure. It doesn’t take any courage, special intelligence, industry expertise, or a crystal ball. You’re not going out on a limb by predicting something will fail. You’re not offering an opinion that runs counter to 99% of your industry. Given the number of attempts at anything that fail, and you’re going to be right more often than you’re wrong. That’s why it’s such a cheap win.

Oh sure, you get to look like you knew what you were talking about when it happens. But the odds are in your favor, as with any startup. It’s like predicting the hitting success of any major league ball player. If you predict an out every time he comes up to bat, roughly 7 – 8 times out of 10, you’ll be right. But it doesn’t take a baseball genius to know that a batter is going to miss 75% of the time.

It takes a pessimistic jerk to say, “he’ll fail this time. And this time. And this time too. And — oops, I was wrong about that one. But I got the other 6 times right.”

The real courage doesn’t lie in predicting failure, it lies in showing success. Talk about what this new tool can do, how it can help people, and where you can see using it. Saying where it fails doesn’t take any creativity.

I’ve seen this lately with all of the Google+ users who whine and mewl that it’s going to fail, or that it doesn’t do certain things, or that it isn’t Facebook, or that Google’s past forays into social media have failed.

Blah blah blah.

There’s no courage in finding fault or criticizing. There’s nothing valuable in predicting that something will fail, and then reciting the same tired litany of faults that you read on some other blog post, or drawing the same tired comparisons to Facebook. They complain but they don’t offer solutions.

You want to do something cool? Tell me what’s awesome about it. Tell me the things this does or has the potential to do. Chris Brogan impressed a hell of a lot of people with The Google+50, which became his most trafficked blog post ever. I may not read Chris Brogan that often, but when I do, it’s because he’s telling me something useful, not why something will/should fail.

I think people who spend most of their time criticizing and finding fault aren’t actually contributing anything of value. They aren’t doing anything useful. They’re the failed restaurant chef who became a food critic. The failed musician who became an agent. The failed teacher who became an administrator.

If you want to be useful, if you want to be valuable, contribute to the success of something, don’t complain. Show why something is cool. Better yet, create something cool. But do something that’s worthy of you and your time. I already think you’re awesome, so show me.

Photo credit: ougenweiden (Flickr)

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